Get your freaky-stick-with-eyes and magic fairy dust out; it’s mine cleaning time. The Techies are here, and ready to cover the forest and lane with your giblets!

Earlier this summer, Garry Newman, founder of Facepunch Studios, responsible for games such as Garry’s Mod and Rust, tweeted a small tease of the production of a real-life Gmod Tool Gun prop.

Despite the age, Half-Life is a game that many set their sights on, mainly for the challenge that is speedrunning. You know, the thing where people try to beat a game as fast as humanly possible, with or without scripts. And loads of bunny hops and grenade jumps. Loads of ’em.

Using a mod that restores Half-Life to its original 2001 version, a group of people has after 4 years of preparation and practice managed to beat the world record speedrun of 27 minutes, with a whopping 20 minutes and 41 seconds clear time.

Four months later, I wake up from my untimely hibernation with some news regarding Portal and handheld consoles!

The Wraith King Cometh.

Hey, are you excited about Frostivus? Yes? Too bad. Remember how last year, we had to cancel our Frostivus dinner because of the traumatic greeviling incident?

Well, I got some news for ya pal. It’s cancelled. Again.

It’s been long since we’ve had a proper Team Fortress 2 update that have added something more than just hats and cosmetics (ignoring, of course, the Halloween events). But this is about to change.

“Please, sir, I want some more.”

Valve was a big, healthy company; not usually easily astonished. But now they turned pale, and quiet. They gazed upon the little boy who had dared to ask for more.

“What” Valve whispered in complete astonishment.

“Please sir, I want some more Diretide…”

Man, what I love the most about Halloween is the spooky mood I get in. You know what I’m saying? Like, for instance, I feel spooky enough to pull of insane spooks that would be considered too spooky outside of Halloween.

It’s all good on Halloween though, because everyone has already been spooked by the Halloween event in Team Fortress 2, which is dubbed every year Scream Fortress. Yes, people. It’s that time of the year. The annual Team Fortress 2 Halloween update is live!

So you’re playing some Team Fortress 2 when all of a sudden you turn into solid gold. You were just killed by a player wearing a tuxedo, holding a small golden statuette of a shirtless, hairy Australian man. You may say to yourself “I hate my life and everything in it”, or you may ask yourself “wait, how can I get one of those things”?

The answer, my friend, is to win the Saxxy Awards.

Update: Due to a loophole with JIRA and Google Cache, people were once again able to access Valve’s project tracker. NeoGAF user ekim managed to snap some pictures of the tracker before it was closed, showing that the Half-Life 3 group have increased in members (to a total of 46), and reveals a new group called Half-Life 3 Core, with only 10 members.

Update 2: The trademark has been removed, and we can safely assume the whole thing was a fake. As fellow writer Dhel says, there is no trademark for either Half-Life 2 nor Left 4 Dead, which further fuels the assumption.
But hey, at least we got some delicious hype out of it, didn’t we?

It hasn’t been long since the leak of the internal changelog at Valve, which confirmed the existence of Source 2 and Left 4 Dead 3.

Ignoring the leak however, we’ve gone long without any news on both Ricochet 2 and Half-Life 3 (the former which I’m personally more excited for). Well, it’s time to quench some of your thirst for news!